When Franklin County started giving Rickenbacker Airport $4.3 million a year in 2003, county
officials expected the airport to be profitable by the end of the 10-year subsidy.

In January 2012, County Administrator Don Brown was still hopeful, but Rickenbacker ended that
year with a $530,000 operating deficit.

Last year, the airport recorded a deficit of almost $1.8 million.

This year, the deficit is budgeted at $702,000.

When can the cargo airport south of Groveport get out of the red?

“Three years,” Elaine Roberts, president and CEO of the Columbus Regional Airport Authority,
said last week — with an asterisk.

“With the successes of the last 12 months and the rebounding economy, I am cautiously confident
that we will be financially stronger and break even in three years,” said Roberts. That’s without
the public subsidy or cash infusions from Port Columbus profits that have plugged annual
deficits.

The arrival last year of Cargolux, one of the bigger international cargo carriers, and the
announcement last week that the biggest — Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Cargo — will begin service
this month fueled her optimism.

Also, the airport’s passenger service, Allegiant Air, has said it will add a fourth destination.
And the airport has made money on ground services such as cargo handling and fueling since taking
over those operations from Lane Aviation, Roberts said.

Hold her to her estimate, she said, as long as Cargolux and Cathay Pacific stay and the economy
doesn’t take another nosedive.

“This is a volatile industry,” Roberts said. “We’re going to give this our best shot. But there
is no guarantee it will ever be self-sufficient.”

The big air freighters fly in apparel and other fashions from Asia bound for L Brands,
Abercrombie & Fitch and other local retailers.

“Our commodity gorilla is fashion,” said David Whitaker, the airport authority’s vice president
of business development.

Those products are stored in the neighboring industrial park’s warehouses, where the vacancy
rate has improved to 3 percent. They’re forwarded to their destinations by smaller planes, trucks
or rail at the adjoining intermodal terminal.

“We call it an inland port,” Roberts said of Rickenbacker, one of the world’s few
cargo-dedicated airports. “It’s a huge economic engine spinning off jobs in and around the
airport."

Even if the airport never breaks even, it and the surrounding warehouse and freight-handling
operations pump $2.8 billion into the local economy, she said, quoting the airport authority’s 2012
economic study. The operation is responsible, directly or indirectly, for about 20,000 jobs and a
half-billion dollars in payroll.

Cargolux and Cathay Pacific each could add $500,000 in revenue at the airport beginning next
year in landing, cargo-handling and fuel fees, Whitaker said. Both have said they want to begin
flying exports out of Columbus this year, he said.

The airport got $1 million from the federal government last year when passenger figures topped
10,000, which it expects to happen again this year.

Randy Bush, the authority’s chief financial officer, said Rickenbacker was chipping away at the
deficit, even showing a surplus of $41,490 in 2008, until the economic downturn hit.

It recorded a deficit of $421,000 in 2010.

The shortage shot up to $531,000 in 2012 when the airport invested in personnel and equipment to
take over ground services from Lane Aviation, which had decided there wasn’t enough business at
Rickenbacker.

Revenue from air freight jumped from $1.6 million in 2011 to $4 million last year with the
addition of Cargolux. But the new business also means $800,000 in additional personnel and
equipment expenses, Bush said.

Last year’s $1.7 million deficit was due in part to a federally mandated accounting change that
required the airport to pay $720,000 for a capital-improvement project in one lump sum, instead of
over five years, he said.

This year’s expected deficit of $702,000 does not include revenue or expenses related to Cathay
Pacific’s arrival, Bush said.

Although they don’t expect to provide the airport a new cash infusion, Franklin County officials
remain staunch supporters of Rickenbacker.

That might come in handy, considering the airport’s $90 million capital-improvements plan. About
$5 million has been spent to upgrade roads for truck traffic from the airport to the intermodal hub
nearby. Rickenbacker also needs to find $8 million to replace its 1950s air-traffic-control tower
and $30 million to widen its runways for the Boeing 747-800 cargo planes. (It’s allowed to handle
the big planes in the meantime).

“The county is committed and will continue to work with them to get revenue, either from the
federal government or other sources,” Administrator Don Brown said.